Girl Defined

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Girl Defined is a Christian lifestyle blog and YouTube channel run by sisters Bethany Beal and Kristen Clark which focuses on purity culture and navigating mainstream America as an evangelical.

Contents

History

The success of Girl Defined was built off the failure of the sisters' first project, bairdsisters.com. After bairdsisters.com failed to gain traction the pair rebranded to focus on high school and college aged girls. [1]

In 2016, the sisters began posting videos on YouTube and published their first book, Girl Defined: God’s Radical Design for Beauty, Femininity, and Identity. [1]

In 2018, Girl Defined became a meme after YouTubers Cody Ko and Noel Miller featured Girl Defined's content on their series That's Cringe. This began a trend in which influencers and regular people made videos parodying and mocking Girl Defined. [2]

In the 2020s, the sisters started posting on the platform TikTok. [3]

In 2021, Beal went viral for sharing her story of having her first kiss at 30 during her wedding. [4]

Views

Girl Defined promotes biblical womanhood. Many of their ideas are borrowed from purity culture which was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. [5] The organization has been labeled as Christian nationalist by scholars Sage Mikkelsen and Sarah Kornfield. [6]

Sexuality

Kissing before marriage is discouraged as are all other sexual or sexually suggestive acts. [5] They advise girls who are attracted to other girls to "seek God" instead. [7]

Feminism

Girl Defined has referred to feminism as an “attack on God’s design for womanhood.” [5] They believe that part of the purpose of the community is to support people “taking a stand against feminism.” [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

The law of chastity is a moral code defined by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to the church, chastity means that "sexual relations are proper only between a man and a woman who are legally and lawfully wedded as husband and wife." Therefore, abstinence from sexual relations outside of marriage, and complete fidelity to one's spouse during marriage, are required. As part of the law of chastity, the church teaches its members to abstain from adultery and fornication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet meme</span> Cultural item spread via the Internet

An Internet meme, or simply meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations. Characteristics of memes include their susceptibility to parody, their use of intertextuality, their propagation in a viral pattern, and their evolution over time. The name is from the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Purity ring</span> Ring worn to signal chastity

Purity rings are rings worn as a sign of chastity. Since the 1990s, Christian organizations in the United States used the purity ring as a symbol of commitment. In particular, Catholic and evangelical Christian groups which promoted virginity pledges and virginity before marriage, such as True Love Waits and Silver Ring Thing. Wearing a purity ring is typically accompanied by a religious vow to practice abstinence until marriage. Chastity rings are part of the abstinence-only sex education movement and are intended to act as a physical reminder of the wearer's chastity vow.

The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. The belief is based on the idea that people and their thoughts are made from "pure energy" and that like energy can attract like energy, thereby allowing people to improve their health, wealth, or personal relationships. There is no empirical scientific evidence supporting the law of attraction, and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience or religion couched in scientific language. This belief has alternative names that have varied in popularity over time, including manifestation and lucky girl syndrome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-player character</span> Game character not controlled by a player

A non-player character (NPC) is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence.

Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charli D'Amelio</span> American social media personality (born 2004)

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References

  1. 1 2 Brobst, Scout (19 October 2020). "How Young Evangelical Women Are Navigating a Sex-Positive Internet". vice.com. Vice. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  2. McNeal, Stephanie (5 November 2019). "How These Small-Time Christian Influencers Became A Viral TikTok Meme About Purity Culture". buzzfeednews.com. Buzzfeed. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  3. Vilanova, Constance (20 January 2023). "Aux États-Unis, le culte de la virginité s'installe sur TikTok". telerama.fr. Telerama. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  4. Weekman, Kelsey (6 July 2022). "WHAT HAPPENS TO CHRISTIAN INFLUENCERS WHEN THEY GET MARRIED?". buzzfeednews.com. Buzzfeed. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 Thwaites, Elle (28 June 2022). "The impact of Christian purity culture is still being felt – including in Britain". theconversation.com. The Conversation. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  6. Mikkelsen, Sage; Kornfield, Sarah (2021). "Girls Gone Fundamentalist: Feminist Appeals of White Christian Nationalism". Women's Studies in Communication . 44 (4): 563-585. doi:10.1080/07491409.2021.1911895. S2CID   242451674 . Retrieved July 27, 2023.
  7. Phillips, Jessica (20 January 2021). "YouTube's Fundamentalist Influencers Are Preaching Abstinence and Anti-Abortion". www.vice.com. Vice. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  8. Hugh, Jess (5 October 2022). "'You can't cancel me': embattled TikTok star reinvents herself as a warrior for Jesus". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 February 2023.